


The Texas Ranger

by MedicalAssisstanceSpareChange



Series: Songs of the West [1]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Animal Death, Cowboy AU, Dad-energy Geoff and his sort-of-son Alfredo, Gen, Sheriff Ramsey, Texas Rangers, also just talked about the aftermath and not graphic but just to be safe, based on the song Texas Rangers, discussion of battle, implied/mentioned Dusk Boys, let me know what else I might need to tag, off-screen/implied deaths, the violence discussed isn't terribly graphic but the aftermath is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23663224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MedicalAssisstanceSpareChange/pseuds/MedicalAssisstanceSpareChange
Summary: Sheriff Ramsey is tired of telling Alfredo Diaz, a determined teenager, to stop bugging the nearby Texas Ranger station to let him join. In an effort to finally get through to the kid, he tells him of his own past with the Rangers.
Relationships: Alfredo Diaz & Geoff Ramsey
Series: Songs of the West [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1703842
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	The Texas Ranger

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to write cowboy au stuff for this fandom practically since I joined, they're just so good for it! So I finally did it... at 2 am during quarantine lmao. Look up "The Texas Ranger" as sung by Tex Ritter if you want to know what this is based on! I'll be doing more cowboy-song-based drabbles for these folks, probably, because it's hella fun; if nothing else, I'll be doing something for Red River Valley because that's literally my favorite song ever.
> 
> Thanks for reading! And special thanks to Willow for beta'ing. I'm on tumblr @ilookbetterinslowmo if you wanna talk to me there, my messages/inbox are open! Hope you enjoy, folks.

The man sitting in the sheriff’s office was not particularly happy to be there. Neither was the man standing across the desk from him, his youthful face valiantly attempting to keep out of a frown and failing.

“Diaz,” the sitting man grunted. “What exactly were you doing out at the station yesterday?”

The kid glared at him. It wasn’t their first time having this conversation.

“Right.” Geoff sighed and rubbed a hand down his face, fingers clattering over the two pins on his vest when they dropped off his chin. “Why do I ask. You were there to sign up even though they said no last time, and the time before that, and-”

“I know what they said,” Diaz snapped. “But I will be a ranger one day, and I’ll walk there every day until they let me in if that’s what it takes.”

“You’re fifteen, kid. That’s a lotta walking, especially to a full company of rangers. They ain’t looking to take on someone new right now.”

“I can’t wait another year!” Diaz’s face was frustrated, and like the teenager he was, he stamped his foot as he spoke. “Ten years I’ve been defending the farm after the Collins took me in, fifteen years of not knowing what on earth to do with my life - I need to be a ranger, Sheriff, you know I’m cut for it! I can handle the training and the traveling and the desert, I could be a ranger now if they let me.”

Fifteen, Geoff thought. Fifteen was young, though Alfredo Diaz was in some ways older than a lot of the men Geoff knew. The kid was from the southeast part of Texas, where his family had died in an outlaw raid; only five years old, he’d thrown himself and his little sister Angelica on the back of one of the outlaws’ horses and sped over to the ranger station just west of this town. Angelica was content to stay with the Collinses and someday marry that Jones boy who she’d grown up next to, but the rangers had made an impression that night on Alfredo that Geoff knew wouldn’t come out easy. Ten years hadn’t eased his urge, and Geoff wasn’t sure anything would at this point.

But he had to try. Fifteen was younger than he’d been when he joined the rangers.

“Can I go?” Alfredo’s voice startled him; he’d been staring too long in silence, lost in thought imagining Alfredo at his side down by the Rio Grande.

“Not yet.” Geoff jerked his head towards a chair against the wall. “Grab that and take a seat, kid. I’ve got a story to tell you.” Slowly, Alfredo dragged the chair over to the desk and sat, clearly out of his element. It amused the sheriff; he wasn’t exactly known for entertaining guests, and in the kid’s mind, there was as much chance of him arresting Diaz as letting him go.

“I’ve got a story to tell you, Diaz, and I expect you to keep your mouth shut through the whole damn thing or else I’ll toss you in the hold for the night, mkay?” Alfredo nodded. Good, Geoff thought, no interruptions would make it easier to get through this. “You see these two pins on my vest here? Golden star for the sheriff, of course you know that one.” He pointed at the pin below. “Silver star, set in a circle, you know that one too.”

Diaz nodded, but said nothing.

“Texas Ranger’s pin right there, kid. I started off when I was just sixteen, just a year older than you, and got in a battle my very first month.” He sighed, deeply, to hide the way his jaw was already clenching. “Nearly thirty years ago and it still makes my stomach turn to remember it. We knew it was coming; our captain warned us on the road to our new station that we’d have to fight, but we were all young and stupid. Bit like you, in case you miss my meaning.” He waited for the hint of annoyance on Alfredo’s face, and when it came, he smirked. “Well, that fight came all right. Lasted nine hours, just before noon until sundown. You ever seen sundown on a battlefield, Diaz? The corpses of horses and men casting shadows long as the Rio over their own blood? You don’t want to. There’s a lot of blood in a man, more in a horse, and seeing it all come out is a horrible thing. One of my best friends was lost in that fight, a young man by the name of Gus. I saw him in a pool of red wide as his outstretched arms. And another kid I’d met in training, fella named Matt who knew the land even better than the Indians, got hit right through the stomach. Both good folks, cut down by arrows and lances and left to bleed.”

Alfredo’s face had fallen some. Good, Geoff thought. “We won, but fourteen others of us had fallen besides Gus and Matt, including our captain. We had to take the Indians’ horses just to make it to the station, but first we had to dig the graves and bury the bodies and say some words so they’d go in peace to whatever’s after this life. Took a long time.

“We did it wounded, and we had to patch ourselves up as we went, because we didn’t know better. Hadn’t been taught to take care of yourself before the dead, see? We’d been thirty strong when we rode out, and now less than half of that remained, and it took us until sunrise to be done. Sundown on blood is bad, but starlight?” Geoff shook his head. “Starlight on a battlefield is horrible. Beautiful, but horrible.”

He was too far in his own head. He could tell because he could smell blood again, because his hands twinged with phantom blisters from an imaginary shovel, because he could see the dirt mingling in Matt’s half-beard and the peaceful way Gus looked when the arrow through his back wasn’t visible. “I thought I was dead at first, when the field went silent.” No sound but his own harsh panting, the stomping of a distant horse. “I thought I was dead those whole nine hours we fought, and a while after, too. It’s a terrible sight, seeing a whole group of Indians run towards you from a hillside, arrows and lances all gleaming and glittering, and you’re stood there with a skittish horse and a gun and nothing else. I ain’t ashamed to say I was scared, Diaz. Still the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me, those nine hours.”

“But you made it-”

“I said don’t interrupt me, kid.” The memories were gone when Alfredo spoke, and Geoff was glad of it. “You spent ten years in this town with me as sheriff, you should know I don’t scare easy. I stood off those outlaws who killed your family all by myself and they left without a fuss, and I wasn’t scared then. I nearly died to a band of coyotes at the Jones’s place when I was lending them a hand through Lindsay’s second delivery, I wasn’t scared then either. But that battle - that slaughter, Alfredo? That scared me to my soul.”

He sighed again, looking back at the kid. Alfredo seemed uncertain; still angry, still full of fight, but clearly listening and taking the story to heart. Good. “I know you want to be one of those men what saved you and your sister, kid. I get that. But follow the advice of an old ranger and stay home. It’s what your mama would have wanted.” It was what his own mother had wanted, tearfully asking him to reconsider from the doorway as he strode out to shake the hand of the captain. “I stayed a ranger for years, traveled past the Rockies, into Apache land, been through hell on earth in the desert and the wild unclaimed lands to the west. I have experience with this, Alfredo, and I’m telling you to stay. At. Home. Understood?”

Slowly, with his jaw tight, Alfredo nodded.

“Good.” Geoff shifted in his chair and stretched. “You can go, then. Tell Mr. and Mrs. Collins I send my best wishes.”

“Yes, sir.” Alfredo stood, but didn’t leave.

“What?” Geoff asked after an annoying amount of time had passed. “Story’s over, you can go, unless you got something you need me for.”

“I listened good and close to your story, Sheriff, I promise you that.” Diaz spoke loud and fast, like a stick of dynamite fizzling to explode. He drew himself up, hands resting at his sides, legs planted firm, and continued: “But I knew my mama, and she would have shot those outlaws who killed my family herself if she’d lived, and told the whole state about it. So I’m still going to be a ranger.” Geoff made a noise of protest, but Alfredo’s hand came up to shush him. “I’ll wait until I’m old enough and I’ll go where they need a recruit, but I will not rest until I’ve become a ranger and helped others like I was helped, and once I’m a ranger I won’t stop until I feel this land is safe or I get old.”

Stupid kid, Geoff thought, absolute idiot. “You go become a ranger, Diaz, you won’t live to see what old is like.”

“Neither did my parents.” Pain flashed in Alfredo’s eyes; Geoff recognized it all too well. “I went back to bury them, you know. Ranger by the name of Narvaez asked if I wanted to say something for them and let me ride on his horse. I’ve buried people close to me, Sheriff Ramsey, and I’m prepared to do it again if it means I do some good.”

“Diaz,” Geoff said despairingly. “You don’t have to, is the thing. I got out of ranging. You - you don’t even have to get started.”

“Ramsey,” Alfredo replied, and that was dangerous, leaving off the sheriff or the sir. “I’ve had ten years to think about this and live a better life here. I know this is what I want to do.” His dark eyes bored into Geoff, staring down from a height of certainty Geoff knew he couldn’t topple. “I’ll wait till I’m sixteen, I promise you that. I won’t waste your time with fetching me from the station, and I’ll behave myself around town and try to keep Trevor and Gavin out of trouble. And then I’ll ride off to the ranger station and sign up.”

He was an idiot, Geoff decided, an absolute moron who was going to die before his sister had her first child, but by god was he determined. And though he’d been scared for his life, Geoff had been determined too, back towards Mexico and thirty-odd years ago. 

Geoff stood, sighing a third time, but this one felt more relaxing. “I see your heart’s set on this, kid.” He reached up to his chest and tapped the silver star. “A year, alright? Keep working hard and keep your nose clean, and in a year, if I’m satisfied with how you’ve done, I’ll give you this star to take with you to camp. It might help you get recruited.”

“What?” He’d stunned the kid. “Sheriff, I-”

“Shut it.” He smiled as Alfredo’s jaw snapped closed. “I talked, and you listened, and then you talked and I listened, and we both made our choices. Ain’t that the way men do it?” He held his hand out to shake.

Slowly, with a grin splitting his face, Alfredo grabbed his hand and shook. “A year,” he promised, “and then I’ll be shining that badge on my own chest.”

“A year,” smiled Geoff. “You better impress me, Alfredo Diaz.”

“I will.” And Geoff believed it.


End file.
